🐱 The Rise of Lonely, Single Men

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CatParty

Younger and middle-aged men are the loneliestthey’ve ever been in generations, and it’s probably going to get worst.

This is not my typical rosy view of relationships but a reality nonetheless. Over the last 30 years, men have become a larger portion of that growing group of long-term single people. And while you don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be happy, men typically are happier and healthier when partnered.

Here are three broad trends in the relationship landscape that suggest heterosexual men are in for a rough road ahead:

Dating Apps. Whether you’re just starting to date or you’re recently divorced and dating again, dating apps are a huge driver of new romantic connections in the United States. The only problem is that upwards of 62% of users are menand many women are overwhelmed with how many options they have. Competition in online dating is fierce, and lucky in-person chance encounters with dreamy partners are rarer than ever.

Relationship Standards. With so many options, it’s not surprising that women are increasingly selective. I do a live TikTok show (@abetterloveproject) and speak with hundreds of audience members every week; i hear recurring dating themes from women between the ages of 25 and 45: They prefer men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and share similar values.

Skills Deficits. For men, this means a relationship skills gap that, if not addressed, will likely lead to fewer dating opportunities, less patience for poor communication skills, and longer periods of being single. The problem for men is that emotional connection is the lifeblood of healthy, long-term love. Emotional connection requires all the skills that families are still not consistently teaching their young boys.

While there’s probably no chance of stemming the rising tide of unintentional single men, there is still good news.

The algorithms are becoming increasingly more complex on dating apps and other online platforms. One benefit is that great matches are on the rise. Hinge, one dating app, found through beta trials that 90% of users rated their first date positively, with 72% indicating wanting a second date.

How can men reap the benefit of the algorithms? Level up your mental health game. That means getting into some individual therapy to address your skills gap. It means valuing your own internal world and respecting your ideas enough to communicate them effectively. It means seeing intimacy, romance, and emotional connection as worthy of your time and effort.

Ultimately, we have an opportunity to revolutionize romantic relationships and establish new healthy norms starting with a first date. It’s likely that some of these romances will be transformative and healing, disrupting generational trauma, and establishing a fresh culture of admiration and validation.

Men have a key role in this transformation but only if they go all-in. It’s going to take that kind of commitment to themselves, to their own mental health, to the kind of love they want to generate in this world. Will we step up?
 
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They prefer men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and share similar values.
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mans should have known he did something wrong when all his pants immediately burned to ashes
 
Honestly this wouldn't even be that much of a problem if there was any place left for dudes just to hang out with other dudes. Like a male only space to be able to meet/create some friends. Most men only need one or two really good friends to be able to deal with the bullshit of the modern world.
 
Matt Damon said:
Just realize what I did: "companionship" only seems appealing until you actually have to deal with the day-to-day reality of it. Life is infinitely more enjoyable when you don't have that self-imposed albatross around your neck.
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not to say that you can't find happiness in a relationship but the experience is massively oversold
 
Divine right to rule said:
Men's "emotional intelligence" is the issue, you guys. This is also appearantly a skill.
Just communicate with a woman as if you were a woman yourself. They love feminine men in touch with their feelings, didn't you know?
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I hate that term “emotional intelligence”. It’s just a means to dismiss actual intelligence. People with emotional intelligence are also pretty manipulative. Hitler was known to have high EQ.

What if I can read your emotions but don’t care? Does me not doing anything to control your emotions mean I have low emotional intelligence? Do women have low emotional intelligence since it’s clear that most of them don’t understand men?
 
Hugger Brother said:
not to say that you can't find happiness in a relationship but the experience is massively oversold
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I spent way too long being confused by how unsatisfying I found romantic relationships until I realized what should've been obvious - the only thing that makes them "special" compared to any other ho-hum interpersonal relationship is the enormous amount of implied obligation they entail.

Maybe that's desirable to some people for reasons I can't fathom, but I just don't need that shit in my life.
 
I like how in this addressing of “emotional intelligence” and “skills” it doesn’t ever mention autism lmao get fucked
 
There are so many of these anti-male hitpieces, and they are all essentially the same;

1. Women's standards are high (never suggesting TOO high, so that implies men are substandard.)
2. Men need tobe more emotional/less toxically masculine (This after fifty years of men being more and more emotional and feminine in presentation.)
3. That's just life, fellas!
 
Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed said:
I hate that term “emotional intelligence”. It’s just a means to dismiss actual intelligence.
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I have a distaste of the term because-- like the idea of "love languages"-- it's seemingly part of a convoluted routine women have apparently devised to shame men into accepting their lack of clarity and honesty about the things they want from a man.

I cannot believe that anyone would lecture me about how a woman saying "you don't do anything for me!" said to someone who literally does everything she asks of him is actually meant to indicate that he's not giving her the emotional feedback she wants, or that starting up crap out of nowhere about minutiae is actually her trying to communicate that she wants attention she's currently not getting from him. I cannot wrap my head around the idea that someone can say that they put in so much effort into initiating a relationship with a man when their idea of "effort" is "I positioned myself in his view and waited for him to pick up on the hinting, which took a bit of time because he was initially a bit dull".

And yet, I've been told all of these things without the slightest hint of jocularity.

By the day, "emotional intelligence" seems more like a way to sugarcoat the premise that infants communicate better than adult women, and have more interest in doing so.

Or, maybe it's just a way to create conflict purely for the sake of preventing the relationship from being static.
 
Back me up! said:
Honestly this wouldn't even be that much of a problem if there was any place left for dudes just to hang out with other dudes. Like a male only space to be able to meet/create some friends. Most men only need one or two really good friends to be able to deal with the bullshit of the modern world.
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It's the bar. That's the new male meeting space.

I think women have become so hopelessly addicted to tiktok and dating apps over the pandemic that I almost never see women in the bar anymore that didn't come there with some guy or with a hen party. It's always all men now.
 
There have always been lonely, single men. Historically, they might join monasteries to find meaning in life, or they would go raiding, or if they had a few spare coins they'd find a prostitute and develop a mutually beneficial relationship. For most, these solutions are untenable nowadays. Monasteries are now few and far between, and monastic communities are much smaller and older. Raiding is frowned upon, especially if you bring back slaves or try to impregnate the natives. Soliciting prostitution carries severe legal consequences and social stigma in most jurisdictions.
 
Younger and middle-aged men are the loneliestthey’ve ever been in generations, and it’s probably going to get worst.

This is not my typical rosy view of relationships but a reality nonetheless. Over the last 30 years, men have become a larger portion of that growing group of long-term single people. And while you don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be happy, men typically are happier and healthier when partnered.
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The article it seems to me starts from a foundation that is pretty much true, but then engages in a lot of sophistry that denies the true dynamics of female sexual attraction. With women more than even men, assess and evaluate less on what is said or written, and far more on behavior and actions

A lot of young men are lonely, are finding it hard to meet someone. Women don't eschew these men because a lack of "emotional intelligence," they eschew them because a lack of success with women or even perceived lack of success with women is a huge turn off.

Whereas men want and desire beautiful attractive women, beautiful, attractive women do not want attractive men so much as they want men who are desired by other, beautiful attractive women, or even women that a given woman thinks she should be able to out compete.

I will submit a few works to buttress my position. This is exactly what happened in 1986's "Can't Buy Me Love." The high school geek, back when geek was a worse pejorative than nerd, paid the blond hottie to date him for a month, and he was slaying pussy until she outed him because women are attracted to men who have success with other women.

I cannot recommend Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons enough.
One of her suitors, Adam, is the intellectual she claimed she wanted in her silly declarations about "wanting a life of the man' before she crapped out in her grades with a D or a C. But she sensed that her female "frienemies" disapproved of him. So even though the author goes to great lengths to describe Adam as bookish, introverted, but quite handsome, that perceived disapproval short circuited her own appraisals of his desirability. Her inner monologue is revealed by the omnipotent third person narrator as thinking he is quite cute....

Inclined to dismiss both accounts as ficiton? Ok, boom:


Salient passage:

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.
Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.” (emphasis added)
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Another salient passage:

As for a man's cheating, "that's a thing that girls let slide, because you have to," said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. "If you don't let it slide, you don't have a boyfriend."
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Note this picture taken for the article. Look at those college women hanging on that shit bird.
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What could account for that, you ask? Status (if he is in a fraternity) and social proof!

Sexual Utopia In Power is also good, but I do think F Roger Devlin can be criticized for exhibiting sour grapes of an ugly old man. There has to be some balance.

As an addendum, someone further up claimed that 40 percent of women use apps to get free food. That does happen but the 40 percent statistic sounds made up.

Furthe addendum: note there have been some retractions in the article, one stating that the article did not mean to characterize some college girl interviewed to approve of riding the cock carousel. I distinctly remember wording to the effect, I think from Rachel Sasser, that she do not se he boyfriend fucking five other sorority sisters as a problem but "as validation." Maybe it is still in there, I only did a quick skim of this article I read many years ago and remember to this day, but did not see it. Can any fellow Kiwiians find the older version?
 
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Hack for crack said:
Just move to South East Asia and marry an autistic little brown fuck machine who can speak English. Best choice I ever made. I love her so much.
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S. Asia and SEA are increasingly sounding like the last bastion of non BPD women on Earth. Sure they're mercenary as fuck but hell..... All ladies are in some respect.
 
Nah the wine moms will be fine. They'll be single, but Tyrone and his four buddies will give them a free children before going out for a smoke.

As long as one of the cats doesn't mistake Tyrone's monkey maker for a toy and scratches it, than its cap busting time my niggas.
 
Back me up! said:
Honestly this wouldn't even be that much of a problem if there was any place left for dudes just to hang out with other dudes. Like a male only space to be able to meet/create some friends. Most men only need one or two really good friends to be able to deal with the bullshit of the modern world.
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There are, but they are fairly limited in scope. Hobbies that women inherently are repulsed by are safe. I've only seen a couple broads in cigar lounges, and usually they are chill.

Matt Damon said:
I spent way too long being confused by how unsatisfying I found romantic relationships until I realized what should've been obvious - the only thing that makes them "special" compared to any other ho-hum interpersonal relationship is the enormous amount of implied obligation they entail.

Maybe that's desirable to some people for reasons I can't fathom, but I just don't need that shit in my life.
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I obviously don't know your stories, but whenever I have seen people like you I always get the feeling you've just been in mediocre relationships. Romance is a thing, it's just exceedingly rare to connect with someone to that level. You have to have two people who are willing to put the well being of the other first. Not many people are capable of that.

I'd agree with you on meh relationships at least, there isn't a point to them. Relationships are a lot of work, and unless you're with someone you'd take a bullet for the work isn't worth it.
 
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